Monthly Archives: December 2016

Apple Orchard

I’ve already posted two pictures from our brief trip to Pennsylvania today, although both of them were taken in Maryland on the way home. I showed this picture to Dorothy and she agreed that it was worth posting, so here’s the third picture from today. This one was taken before the two church pictures so I’m posting them in the wrong order, but that’s life (“that’s what all the people say”).

We cut our Christmas trees at a place called Shower’s Tree Farm (http://www.showerstreefarm.com/). In addition to a fairly large field of Christmas trees, they have apples, which isn’t surprising in this part of the state (the home of Musselman’s (now part of Knouse Foods) and the National Apple Museum. The trees were all bare but some of them had quite a few apples on the ground around them and that, obviously, is what this picture features.

Dilapidated Church

As mentioned in the previous post, we went to Pennsylvania to cut Christmas trees today. After a brief (but less brief and more eventful than expected) visit to the farm, we went to a local tree farm to cut a few trees. For quite a few years we’ve gone to a farm in Cashtown, west of Gettysburg. It’s nice to go to the same place year after year but we received word from them that they were not going to be open this season. We don’t know if that’s a permanent closing or if it’s for this year only. In any case, they recommended another farm that’s actually closer, so we went there.

We had lunch at the Ott House in Emmitsburg, as we’ve done for about four years (prior to that we’d go somewhere different every year). Mom had seen a piece in the newspaper about a church that was in bad enough shape that it couldn’t really be repaired but that is old and historic enough that it shouldn’t be torn down. Of course, if it isn’t repaired, it will come down eventually under its own weight. Anyway, we decided to try to find it and (as you’ve probably guessed by now) we did. The sun was behind the church, which made lighting difficult, and again, there were power lines to contend with, but I’m pretty happy with this shot.

Elias Evangelical Lutheran Church

We drove up to Pennsylvania today with some other family members to get Christmas trees. For a while dad was planting trees at the farm every few years and we’d often cut trees from among those but new trees haven’t been planted for at least ten and probably closer to 20 years so all of those are much too big to be of any use. Still, we go there as a sort of tradition, knowing we’ll only stay a short while. Some years we have had snow and a few years there was enough that we had to part at the entrance and then walk in. The last few years have been clear and mild. Today it was cold but there was no snow. There was a thin layer of ice on the pond and it was making the most amazing pinging noise as the sun heated it slightly. At first we were sure it was a bird making that noise but it was the ice.

We cut our trees at a local tree farm and then drove down to Emmitsburg for lunch. I took a little time to take some pictures of Elias Evangelical Lutheran Church on North Avenue, a block from Main Street, where we parked. The trick here was to get a picture without telephone and power lines crossing in front of the church.